Mr. Robot Recap: Stronger Together

Mr. Robot Season 2, Episode 4 Recap: Stronger Together

Hello, friends. Stuffing your fingers in a dam will inevitably result in the gathering water forcing the to dam burst open.

Tonight's story begins with The Careful Massacre Of The Bourgeois and the history of the fsociety mask. The parody of a horror film makes the story we're about to hear even more horrifying. Elliott reveals that at a previous job he was hired to hack until their system was hacker proof. Over Memorial Day weekend his coworkers locked him in the server room so they could take off, since he wouldn’t stop. He woke up with all the servers destroyed and couldn’t remember doing it. You know what that means, friends. In this shared moment, Darlene and Elliott also talk about their mom, with Darlene revealing that she “still shits on dad every time I talk to her." It's a small thing, but could it have anything to do with why Elliott sees Mr. Robot as his dad?

Joanna is still searching for Tyrell, and seemingly losing her sanity while she does it. She’s got the parking lot attendant who woke Elliott up in the season one finale on her payroll, covering Tyrell's tracks. She later lets herself into Scott Knowles’ home to lodge a complaint about her money situation. It seems his severance package is being held hostage by the man whose wife he killed. It's not only the lower classes who will pay when the banks go under. The moment Joanna explains to her piece of man candy what his place in the universe is shall go down as one of the most remarkable and horrifying scenes of this show.

Angela is listening to self-help tapes, as you do, on the way to work one morning when she spies an executive get arrested and removed from the building. It sparks a idea in her that Evil Corp and Phillip are leveraging her for...some purpose. We find out via conference call that Phillip and Whitehorse, finally making a grand reappearance that was teased at the end of season one, are in cahoots, with Phillip using Angela as part of his Occam’s razor influenced plan and Whitehorse frustrated that their plan isn’t working on the time scheduled he'd like. When Angela thinks she’s figured out the play, some silly thing about shell companies, she starts making demands for a new office and job. Phillip brushes her off, which is the most ominous response of all.

Dominique brings all the cops to the yard, and by yard, I mean Coney Island. They're only around long enough to let us know they found that bullet casing. Later, Darlene gets off the subway, thinking she’s being followed while a distorted version of “A Rainy Night In Georgia” plays. She’s stopped by the last person in a pack of kids wearing fsociety masks, who turns out to be her ex-boyfriend. He takes her phone and directs her to meet him at a bar around the corner. He tells her the FBI are onto them. He also tells her that whoever is tracking the remaining members of fsociety is not the Dark Army. While they have sex in the bathroom, the reveals that the Dark Army have discovered what the FBI know and that Romero was the leak of their list of FBI agents that tipped off Dominique, while Neil Young’s “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” plays in the background.

Everyone wants Elliott to settle things with Mr. Robot. Ray suggests a game of chess, which Mr. Robot offers to Elliott as a high-stakes resolution for their disagreement over who is in charge. Krista argues against Elliott annihilating Mr. Robot, because he is now a part of Elliott. Leon argues for dreaming, so Elliott can understand what the point of doing any of this might be. That's advice Elliott can get behind and so he imagines dreaming of a wonderful world of unity and family, with no Evil Corp, while a sweet instrumental of Green Day’s “Basket Case” plays. Its dulcet tones put him to sleep, where he meets Mr. Robot for a game of chess. It turns out to be a game he can’t win. It was all a sham so Mr. Robot could prove they can't exist without each other.

When Darlene reveals everything she knows to Elliott about the FBI (tip of the cap to the Berenstain bears), he finds himself not only in bed with Ray for a hacking project of unknown proportions, but ready to take on hacking the FBI. My my, hey hey.